ABSTRACT
Cognitive sociolinguistics is concerned with speaker’s knowledge and perception of linguistic variation. It incorporates information regarding communicative environments, interactional processes and the way in which they are both perceived. A cognitive sociolinguistics investigates the variable production of lin - guistic manifestations and the perception that the speakers themselves have of variability. Since this is a realm that involves principles and concepts from cognitive linguistics, such as “prototype” or “schema” for instance, cognitive socio - linguis tics imposes upon itself the obligation of explaining, in a way different from that of conventional sociolinguistics, many of its fundamental elements, including linguistic variables and variants. At the same time, cognitive sociolinguistics formulates research questions such as: What does the speaker know about sociolinguistic variation? Where does such knowledge reside, and how is it organized? How do speakers detect their community’s patterns of linguistic variation, and how do they respond to these patterns?
